#UseMeInstead: Clergy face off with Florida cops over use of mugshots in target practice

Following the controversial news that Florida police were using mugshots of black men for target practice, Lutheran clergy responded on social media by offering officers pictures of themselves as a replacement.

The social media campaign, started under the hashtag
#UseMeInstead, snowballed online as people took notice. More than
60 clergy responded, with the photos being mailed to police.

A closed Facebook conversation by Rev. Joy M. Gonnerman and other
Evangelical Lutheran Church clergy began by asking how to respond
to what they saw as a deep, systematic problem – the fact that
local police were discovered to have used pictures of mug shots
of black men at a gun range.

The controversy began when National Guard Sgt. Valerie Deant
visited a shooting range in Medley, Florida in December, and
found that North Miami Beach Police had been participating in a
shooting drill using the actual photographs of six black males as
targets. What was even more shocking to Deant was that one of the
images was of her brother, Woody Deant.

"Maybe we ought to make it hard to pull the trigger, and
volunteer to put pictures of their family up," Gonnerman
said, according to a report by Local 10.

Another poster said she would send a photo of herself to the
police department. The group then created a Facebook event, which
invited friends to post picture of themselves in their clerical
clothing. The effort picked up steam when people started tweeting
images of themselves using the hashtag, #UseMeInstead.

Overall, 66 clergy responded. Gonnerman said she is mailing the
images to the police department after blowing them up to a size
of 8" x 10.”

The revelation led to a press conference last Monday protesting
the practice. A demonstration on Tuesday expressed further anger
with the situation before City Council officials apologized and
then voted to ban the practice. But protesters said that wasn't
enough, and asked for Police Chief J. Scott Dennis to be fired.

"I've had to live and relive seeing a bullet through my
forehead and a bullet through my eye at the hands of the North
Miami Police Department," Woody Deant said at the news
conference last Monday outside City Hall.

He added: "I am not a mug shot. I am not the tragic mistakes
I made 14 years ago that costs the lives of my friends and my
clean record and my freedom. I do not deserve to be a target for
sport as a training exercise."

For their part, police said they will end the use of real
mugshots.

"This sort of mug shot has been suspended indefinitely and
ceases to exist as part of our training," Dennis said.
"A policy change has been initiated and the new procedure
will be that no one will be shooting photographic images in the
future."